Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Thanks, but I would prefer to do this myself. It’s enough already that you talk with my voice.”

  ‘As you like. We’re still six hundred meters away from the crystal surface. Head slightly southeast.’

  “Let’s keep using the word window.”

  ‘That works.’

  Southeast. That meant that she would have to scale the mountainside. Ewa began sweating as she climbed, and she soon grew breathless. Like yesterday, she was annoyed at herself for not having trained more diligently. If only there weren’t so many boulders lying around! She had to pay close attention as she went along because her heavy backpack was tugging her backwards, hard. It was a good thing she was wearing the enhanced suit, as otherwise there was no way she could have hauled the 150-kilogram battery from the rover up the mountain.

  ‘I think we’re there,’ Friday said.

  The dark, basalt-like surface spread out before her once more. “Now what?” she asked.

  ‘We will need to run a few tests.’

  “You have no idea what to do next, right?”

  Friday shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That notion just came to me. No, how would I know how to control the window? Unfortunately, we don’t have the instruction manual. I assume that we don’t need to activate the entire crystal. A small section should suffice.’

  “I hope so.”

  ‘If not, we’ll grow old doing this, since our cable isn’t all that long. Of course, we could tear the one out of the rover, but then we would be stuck here.’

  “At least we still have the dynamite,” Ewa declared.

  ‘I won’t let it get that far. Go ahead and unpack the battery.’

  Ewa slipped the backpack off her shoulders and peeled the battery out of its package. It looked like a gray ashlar stone with several colorful jacks attached to one of its faces.

  ‘Set it on its side,’ Friday advised. ‘It will have greater stability that way. Exposed like this, the cells are fairly sensitive.’

  She carefully turned the battery on its side. As she did this, the two cables that she had taken from the tool compartment fell into her hands.

  ‘You need the cables now anyway,’ she heard her own voice say. ‘The red cable goes in the red jack, the black one in the black jack.’

  She stuck the end of the first cable into the red jack, then did the same to the black one. On the other end of each of the cables she saw prongs that were almost as large as her bare hands.

  “Is this in any way dangerous?” she asked.

  ‘No, nothing will happen until you turn on the electricity.’

  “That’s very comforting.”

  ‘There’s a chance that nothing will happen then, either.’

  “That would be bad.”

  ‘You need to look for a heavy rock somewhere. Put it on top of the prongs on the end of the black cable, and push it against the dark stone.’

  “Aye-aye, captain.”

  She got to her feet and went off in search of a boulder. The first one she found was much lighter than she expected. She still wasn’t accustomed to the low gravitational force here. She kept looking for a more massive rock and eventually found one that looked half as big as the battery. On Earth, it would have easily weighed 80 kilograms, here on Mars more like 30. She picked it up, carried it over to the cable, and set it on top of the plug as she had been told. In a similar manner, she pressed the prongs on the red cable against the crystalline stone. The two contact points were about three meters apart. If they were lucky, they should be able to see into the chamber shortly.

  ‘Now for the switch. You should stand back behind the battery.’

  She followed Friday’s advice and then flipped the switch. Nothing happened. The smell of burning rubber reached her nose. “It smells like something’s burning,” she said.

  ‘That is impossible,’ Friday said. ‘The smell must have gotten inside your helmet somehow. Otherwise, you would be dead.’

  “You can’t smell it?”

  ‘I smell something.’

  Of course Friday was right. It couldn’t be an external smell, so it didn’t have anything to do with her little experiment. She checked her suit’s status on her universal device, but no malfunctions or errors had been detected. She was obviously imagining things. However, the smell didn’t go away. She exhaled forcefully through her nose, twice. It had to be her imagination.

  ‘Ewa?’

  She flinched. “Uh, yeah?”

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  Ewa examined the dust-free black surface. It looked the same as it had before. “Should I fetch the explosives?”

  ‘Not so fast.’

  “Man, Friday, that was just a joke. I’m sure you have other ideas.”

  ‘Absolutely. We could alter a few things. Let’s reduce the distance between the contact points. We can also change the geometry and alter the voltage.’

  “The geometry?”

  ‘Crystals aren’t symmetrical in all directions. There is always a preferred direction.’

  “Like how customers always converge on the cashier with the shortest line?”

  ‘Something like that. Maybe we need to send the charge either parallel or perpendicular to the dominant direction.’

  “How do we figure that out?”

  ‘Patience, Ewa. We will change one factor at a time and then check to see what happens.’

  “That sounds tedious.”

  ‘It will be. If we limit ourselves to thirty directions with twenty different contact distances and a hundred voltage levels, that will come to sixty thousand attempts.’

  “Are you serious? Even if each attempt only takes a minute, we’ll be here for days.”

  ‘Forty-one days if we don’t take any breaks,” Friday said. “Fifty days would be more realistic.’

  “Seven weeks. Great.”

  Those were the prospects. She had enough supplies on the rover to cover that amount of time, but the thought of spending day after day shoving the same prongs a few centimeters apart made her shudder.

  ‘I could take control...’

  “Forget it.”

  ‘It would feel like you had spent the time asleep.’

  “No.” In all honesty, this was a very attractive idea. If Friday asked one more time, she would give him permission. But he didn’t ask.

  ‘There is a chance that I have slightly exaggerated what we have to do,’ he admitted instead.

  “Really?”

  ‘At least, I hope so. I don’t think that we are talking about an all-or-nothing response in this case. As we run our tests, the window will gradually open. We will just need to keep adjusting the parameters of our test so that it keeps growing more transparent.’

  “That seems doable,” Ewa said. “Are you certain?”

  ‘No,’ Friday replied. ‘It’s just a theory.’

  “Then let’s test it.”

  ‘We are lacking one tool to do this. We need a gauge that will tell us if we are on the right track.’

  “And where can we get that?”

  ‘You will have to build it, Ewa. Let’s hope we have the components for it in the rover.’

  They reached the vehicle right at sundown. Ewa threw one last glance at the ground. All the small rocks around here were casting long shadows. When the sun sits low upon the horizon, it doesn’t take magic to conjure up a long shadow, she thought. She should write a book of aphorisms. But she surely wasn’t the first one to say something like this.

  Should I ask Friday? No. She had already talked to him too much today. These ongoing monologues were draining. On her hike back to the rover, she had occasionally caught sight of someone next to or behind her—only out of the corner of her eye, and very quickly, but it had been convincing. She needed to take care of her mental health, which was why she kept Friday locked down for the rest of the day. She could assemble the gauge early tomorrow morning.

  Sol 323, NASA Base

  Sarah and Sharon met in Ewa’s
former room. It was so new that no surveillance equipment had been installed yet. This was, in reality, a safety risk. Regardless of the issue of private space, Mars represented a danger for everyone if an undetected leak developed anywhere.

  But now this oversight was a godsend, since it enabled them to talk without the administrator being able to listen in. The Mars City technicians had access to the station’s entire technical system, but the only thing they could see from here was the increased oxygen usage in room 17.

  Sharon pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket at the knee of her pants. “Here’s Ewa’s message,” she said, handing it to Sarah, who was holding her son wrapped in a blanket.

  “The drone?”

  “I left it outside. No one will find it there.”

  “Good.”

  Sarah would have enjoyed going back up to the surface again, but for the time being, she didn’t feel like she could leave Michael by himself below. Sharon had offered to watch him, but that wasn’t the problem. Sarah was more frightened by the possibility of falling victim to a freak accident up on the surface. If that happened, Michael wouldn’t have anyone! And every excursion out of the base brought with it a certain risk factor. Mars was an unforgiving planet. Or had she simply grown too fearful? Whatever the case, Michael shouldn’t grow up an orphan. Once Lance was back again, everything would be all right. But until then, she would have to muddle through down here.

  She wasn’t bored by this. Michael made his demands known, but when they had been met, there was always enough to do in the garden. The two women divided up the household chores, but with just the two of them, there wasn’t all that much to tend to.

  Sarah unfolded the note. “Did you read it already?” she asked.

  “Yes—I was too curious to wait,” Sharon answered.

  “That’s okay.”

  Ewa had only written a few lines. She seemed concerned about her note falling into the wrong hands, so she hadn’t revealed much about her plans. Or was it possible she distrusted them? Or, was it that Ewa wanted to protect them by not telling them much? At least they now knew she was doing well.

  “Not very informative,” Sarah declared.

  “I thought so, too. The drone’s battery wasn’t empty, which means she sent it off today. She can’t be far.”

  “At the mountain?”

  “That occurred to me as well. There aren’t all that many possible locations,” Sharon replied.

  “Hopefully, the administrator hasn’t thought of this and sent people there, too.”

  “He shouldn’t know anything about the machine since that all happened before his arrival.”

  “Do you really think that he hasn’t coerced someone to tell him everything?”

  “I don’t know, Sarah. Mike and Lance have definitely not told him anything, but I don’t know the MfE people well enough to say.”

  “That Guillermo shot at us for the sole reason that Ewa had ordered him to.” The Mexican had apologized, but Sarah still counted this against him. “We should warn Ewa, just in case it hasn’t occurred to her that this might happen.”

  Lance called in that evening. Sarah just happened to be on the bridge, showing her son all the instruments and explaining what each of them did. Michael was having fun, most likely because he liked to hear her voice. She had been talking to him since he was in utero.

  “I have two minutes,” Lance said.

  Sarah held their son up to the camera. “We’re doing alright. Don’t worry. And you?”

  “They’re treating us okay. There’s a lot to do, but the mood is very strange.”

  “Strange?”

  Lance glanced around quickly. “I can’t go into details. Not everyone likes the administrator, but he rules the roost. Everything feels a little unreal.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “No clue. Maybe never. We’re supposed to be given vacation time at some point—individually, of course. I’ll believe that when I finally see it.”

  “Things won’t always be like this, Lance.”

  “Just act reasonably and calmly, darling. You have to take care of Michael.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  “And please be careful who you trust. The administrator has more friends than you’d think. But I have to go now. I love you, Sarah.”

  “I love you, too.” She lifted Michael’s arm in a wave.

  Lance laughed as the screen went dark.

  Sol 323, Mars Machine

  “You have to climb up the ladder.”

  Ewa groaned. It was tight here in the farthest back corner of the rover. Of all places, this was where the photocell that Friday wanted was attached to the wall. How could she fit the small stepladder in this space? She pushed several boxes together. It would have to work. She couldn’t open up the ladder, but she could lean it against one of the steel shelving units riveted to the wall.

  “I think I can get to it now,” she said. She climbed two steps up and stretched out her arm. At that moment, the ladder slipped out from under her. She nailed her chin against the uppermost shelf, but managed to catch herself and avoid a fall.

  “Shit,” Ewa said. She set the ladder at a steeper angle and climbed back up it. With her right arm, she could just reach the circuit component. She shoved the blade of the screwdriver behind it and began to pry it free.

  ‘Just tear it out,’ Friday said. ‘I need the cable to be free anyway.’

  He had promised her that the rover could still be driven without it. The photo-sensor’s function was to turn the interior light on when it grew dark. It was programmable for varying levels of sensitivity, and that was why Friday needed it.

  She heard an unpleasant sound, a metallic tearing. Nonetheless, she yanked on the screwdriver one more time. The small box popped free from the wall. Ewa dropped the screwdriver in order to catch the sensor. The tool turned so that its blade pointed downwards just as it hit her bare foot. “Ow!” she cried.

  ‘I told you to wear work shoes,’ Friday said.

  “Thanks for your compassion,” she retorted. “At least there’s no blood.”

  ‘Good. I should be thanking you. Now you just need to get the flashlight and mount it, along with the sensor, inside the box we constructed. We will then sync it with your universal device, and our gauge will be ready.’

  The box that Friday was talking about had previously held cans of beans. She drilled two holes into the bottom of it and now mounted the flashlight at an oblique angle over one hole, and the sensor over the other. The sensor was composed of the photocell. Friday’s idea was that the light from the flashlight would be reflected back from the window to the photocell, which would reveal to them any changes in the material’s optical characteristics.

  “Done,” Ewa said 30 minutes later.

  She really felt done in, but—naturally—Friday wanted to test his invention. Ewa slipped acquiescently into her suit and released the air from the cab. With the gauge in her arms, she marched to the spot where the battery was still sitting.

  ‘Put the box down right in the middle of the two electrical contact points,’ Friday instructed.

  She did as he directed.

  ‘Now, please turn on the voltage.’

  Ewa flipped the switch.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She switched the charge back off.

  ‘Push the contacts a little farther apart and reactivate the electricity.’

  Ewa did what Friday said.

  ‘Thank you. I have good news. The gauge works. We won’t have to keep working blindly, and now we can test every combination.’

  “Is there any bad news?”

  ‘We’ll still need about a week to do it.’

  “Damn it!” Ewa exclaimed. This stupid experiment would still take an entire week. She should have just stayed at the base. No, that wasn’t fair. Friday was doing his best to help her and the other humans. It sometimes seemed to her that he was suffering from a guilty conscience, but it was probably just ef
ficient for him to operate that way.

  Friday finally released her about an hour before sundown. Ewa’s back ached. If Friday were a person, he could at least give her a back rub. Unfortunately, he hadn’t suggested even once taking over control for her. Of course, that wouldn’t have protected her from the back and muscle aches, since he would have had to work using her body.

  She didn’t even have the energy to observe the sun’s afterglow. When she reached the rover, she discovered the drone that she had sent off the day before. She carried it inside. Sarah and Sharon must have responded. It was nice to know that someone was thinking about her, mainly because those someones were people and not AIs. The two of them warned her about staying close to the machine mountain for too long. The administrator could presumably track her down there. And even though he wouldn’t specifically be searching for the technology, he would try to use it for his own purposes.

  Sharon and Sarah were probably right, but she first had to finish her work here. If it was risky, so be it. Nobody would benefit from her running away. Ewa responded immediately. Her meal would have to wait.

  Dear Sarah and Sharon,

  Thank you so much for thinking about me. I share your concerns, which is why tomorrow I will take the rover and move closer to the South Pole. Summers won’t find me there. However, this means that you won’t be able to reach me with the drone any longer. I wish you all the best, and hope that we will see each other again soon under better circumstances.

  She read through her reply once more and then signed it. It was better for Sharon and Sarah if they did not know where she was staying—at least better for them. They wouldn’t have to lie for her. She tasted bitterness at the back of her throat. She would drop completely off the radar and be all on her own. Yes, that was the best for all of them. She would send the drone back to the NASA base with her message tomorrow.

  Sol 324, Mars City

  “Hey, Lance,” somebody behind him whispered. Lance spun around, but no one was in sight. Now he was hearing voices! Being apart from Sarah and his son was driving him insane.